Death Spiral (21 page)

Finally I headed back toward the front door. At the corner I ran into Antti.

“Maria! Where did you go? I was starting to think something might have happened to you!”

“The cigarette smoke was making me a little dizzy, so I thought I’d come outside for some fresh air.”

“Dizzy? You? Come on, what are you up to?”

When I didn’t reply, Antti gave me a hurt look and said he’d paid the check. Then he handed me my jacket. The evening was obviously a failure. Just then someone opened the restaurant door and from inside echoed a stuffy tenor trying to mimic the quality of Juice Leskinen’s voice singing about nestling into a lover’s arms for the night. I felt far away from Antti, even though he was only walking two feet away.

Without a word we climbed into the car, and in the rearview mirror I saw the white Tommy’s Gym van pulling out of the restaurant parking lot. Maybe I was wasting my time trying to fit all the people I had met and all the stories I had heard into one puzzle with the belief I would find the truth about Noora’s murder in the final picture. Maybe the random, irrational-seeming order to the pieces was actually right. Maybe it was a stereogram. Maybe somewhere under the surface there was a three-dimensional picture if I could just look at it the right way.

I’d planned to dig into any connections between Liikanen and Teräsvuori first thing Wednesday morning, but on my desk I found a summons waiting for Tirkkonen’s sentencing hearing at ten o’clock. Even though it was an open-and-shut case, I spent the rest of the morning testifying. After quickly scarfing down meatballs for lunch, it was time to head for my appointment at the OB clinic.

I’d gradually become accustomed to the routine: urine sample, weight, baby’s heartbeat . . . The throbbing sounds relayed by the ultrasound machine were like an opaque window into my womb. I could feel the baby moving inside of me, and I could hear the sounds of that tiny heart. This baby was as close to me as another person could be, but it was still a stranger, still faceless.

“Your blood pressure is a little high,” the nurse said. “Has anything special been happening in the last few days?”

I thought about getting stuck in the gym and the chase yesterday, wondering whether I should mention them. The nurse was a few years younger than me, a very sensible type who didn’t consider pregnancy a sickness.

“There’s some stuff at work I need to get done before I go on leave. That’s been stressful,” I said.

“If you don’t get your blood pressure down, you’re going to end up on sick leave before then anyway,” the nurse said. Even though her tone was friendly, it sounded like a threat. “Come back in on Monday and we’ll see if things have improved. How would eight work?”

I said I’d make it work, even though my brain didn’t run at full capacity that early in the morning. I decided to keep working instead of going home to rest. I felt guilty about it, but I doubted my blood pressure was going to fall from resting. I would still be thinking about the work I had left to do.

I was relatively close to Tommy’s Gym and the Liikanen-Grigorieva apartment. Would it make sense to stop by for a visit? I decided to try my luck—I could always make up some excuse about Noora or getting stuck in the gym.

Irina Grigorieva opened the door. She was short for her age with the tensely focused and simultaneously dreamy expression of a little ballerina on her face.

“Mom is home,” she said in answer to my question.

I wondered what it had been like for Irina to move to a new country as a seven-year-old, to go to school without understanding the language or Finnish social habits.

“You again? What is it this time?” Elena Grigorieva appeared at the kitchen door, drying her hands on a dish towel. “I don’t have much time. Our beginner class starts at three fifteen.”

The features of Grigorieva’s face seemed even more sharply defined than before, her large nose and high cheekbones making her look exotic.

I decided not to beat around the bush.

“You didn’t tell me your husband knows Vesku Teräsvuori.”

There was a flash in Grigorieva’s eyes, but then she composed her expression.

“Knows who?”

“Don’t play games. You know perfectly well who Vesku Teräsvuori is. The Nieminen family’s stalker.”

“Oh, him! Where did you get the idea that he and Tomi know each other?”

Rather than answering, I just stared at Grigorieva, who wrung the dish towel in her hands.

“I don’t know all of Tomi’s friends! He has his life, and I have mine.”

I continued staring. They would have discussed both Hanna Nieminen moving out of her house and Teräsvuori’s subsequent stalking. I didn’t believe for a second that Liikanen and Teräsvuori’s acquaintance could have remained a secret from Elena—unless Tomi was specifically trying to keep it secret.

“Where did you meet your current husband?” I asked. My back hurt, so I leaned against the doorjamb. I wished I could sit down, but Grigorieva made no indication of asking me in.

“Tomi? In Moscow. Anton, my first husband, was still alive. He met Tomi at a party. Tomi built a new weight-training room for our ice rink. Back then the state still had money for things like that, but now I doubt they even have ice worth skating on . . .” Grigorieva glanced at the dishrag as if wondering what it was doing in her hands and then threw it into the kitchen. “Do you have any other questions? I need to go soon.”

“You didn’t tell me how you got to know Tomi.”

“Police or
militsiya
, it’s always the same! Nothing else matters when they want to ask their questions!” Grigorieva spat. I remembered how at our first meeting she had remarked on me cleaning up. “At home in Moscow” the police usually just made messes.

“Did the militia harass you back in the Soviet times?”

“
Militsiya
!
Then it was the KGB. Of course we went abroad for competitions and so we had too many American contacts. The KGB was always worried we would defect at the first chance that came along.” With a concerned look, Elena glanced toward the door behind which Irina had disappeared. “But we knew our families’ lives would be hell if we did.”

“You first husband died in an automobile accident . . . Is that right, that he was run down?”

Grigorieva nodded, then suddenly motioned toward the living room. “You’re alone. So this isn’t an official interrogation? Come, sit. Would you like tea? I thought I would have a cup before leaving.”

“Thank you, yes.” My back was even more thankful as I sat down in the thick padding of an upholstered armchair. I hadn’t had time to think about what I was going to ask Elena Grigorieva, so I let her lead the conversation. She appeared in the room carrying a decorative tea tray that looked like real silver and offered me a cup whose handle also looked like silver. A spoonful of raspberry jam floated in the pitch-colored brown liquid.

Elena sat down in the other armchair and stirred her own cup.

“Anton was hit by a car one night on the way home from a meeting. He wasn’t coaching—he said he’d enough of skating—but he worked for the Ministry of Sports.”

“How long has it been since then?”

“In August it will be five years. It happened just before the generals’ coup attempt.”

“Did they ever catch the driver?”

Elena Grigorieva sighed. According to her, it was at night, and no one had even reported seeing the incident, even though it occurred on a relatively busy street. The militia dropped the investigation within a month. Elena had heard all sorts of innuendo about the KGB and maneuvering inside the Sports Ministry, but she never knew what theory to believe.

“Tomi came to Anton’s funeral. Almost immediately he offered to marry me so I could get out of the country. Then came the coup attempt, and conditions at the skating rinks started getting worse. There was no money to pay salaries and no decent ice.”

Although Elena didn’t state it directly, my impression was that she hadn’t married Tomi Liikanen out of all-consuming love but out of a need for security. This two-bedroom apartment wasn’t the lap of luxury by any means, so maybe there was more to the story than a simple economic calculation. I wondered if there was any connection between Tomi Liikanen and Anton Grigoriev’s death.

“So your first husband and Tomi were good friends?”

“Friends? I imagine so. Anton made friendships easily. He was like that. He hadn’t known many Finns before. You didn’t have very many international-level skaters during our peak. Rami Luoto was really the only one. Anton had even started learning Finnish. We both had.”

“You speak amazingly well.”

“I have to. I train ten-year-olds, and they don’t speak English yet. Oh, by the way, about the pills Noora was taking . . . Do you have any more information about that? Where did she get them?”

I shook my head and took a sip of tea. The strong flavor created an odd sensation in my nose. New doubts were running through my mind. There were a lot of connections to Russia in this case. The Grigorievs, Tomi Liikanen, and Kauko Nieminen, whose company did most of its business hauling freight to and from Russia. Over the winter the Helsinki narcotics division had solved a heroin-smuggling case in which the courier had been a high-level basketball coach who was constantly traveling between Riga and Helsinki. He had played on the Soviet national team and testified that during the bad old days, athletes who traveled abroad had been used to smuggle drugs and money. The Grigorievs could have been involved in that, but it had been more than fifteen years since their prime. Maybe as a ministry official, Anton Grigoriev had organized some sort of smuggling operation and met Tomi Liikanen . . .

Noora could have learned something that was so dangerous they had to kill her. But that meant that Tomi Liikanen was likely also involved in Anton Grigoriev’s death. I couldn’t imagine that Liikanen would have married the wife of the man he killed, but maybe Elena Grigorieva had been in on the plot too.

If Tomi Liikanen was mixed up in Noora’s and Grigoriev’s deaths, my getting locked in the gym might not have been an accident . . .

Just then Irina walked into the living room and asked her mother something in Russian.

“
Da, da, Irinotska, idjom
. . . We really do have to go now.”

Emptying my teacup, I hauled myself out of my chair. I desperately needed someone I could talk through these new ideas with. Probably best to head back to the station. Maybe Taskinen would still be there. I wanted to talk to him and with his daughter, Silja.

“Will Silja be practicing today?” I asked Elena in the stairwell.

“At five. If you have some business with her, please don’t interrupt practice, though. Our Canada trip is coming up, and we need all the ice time we can get. Life must go on even though Noora is dead.”

Maybe Grigorieva had thought the same thing after her husband’s death. Life must go on. Elena deciding to continue her life in Espoo, Finland, had been an amazing stroke of luck for many young skaters. And maybe she really loved Tomi Liikanen. What did I know? Who was I to judge other people’s relationships?

When I reached our unit, the duty officer rushed up to me.

“Where have you been? Ström almost had us call out the dogs looking for you.”

I realized I’d turned off my cell phone when I went to the clinic, worrying it might interfere with the ultrasound machine.

“Ström is in Interrogation Room 3 with Koivu and the perv you picked up yesterday.”

“What do they need me for?” I muttered to myself and then threw my coat in my office and changed my shoes. My back was hurting again, maybe a result of the bumps I’d received at the gym. I sat down for a second on the couch in my office, and a wave of exhaustion hit me like a blackout shade thrown over a parrot cage. I didn’t want to go listen to Ström’s carping, and I didn’t want to see a grubby child molester whose worst punishment wouldn’t be his loss of freedom but his position as a pariah in the prison hierarchy.

As I reached the hallway with the interrogation rooms, I found Koivu standing at the soda machine.

“Good you came,” he said with a sigh. “This interrogation is a living hell. Right now I’m cursing myself for not becoming a kindergarten teacher.”

“Yeah?”

Koivu wasn’t one for outbursts of frustration—his sense of humor generally kept him on an even keel in even the worst situations. I suspected he had somehow managed to maintain some degree of idealism about police work even after five years on the job. He probably still thought we could really do something about criminals.

“Try spending all day in a room with three maniacs! Ström is on a tear. On his last smoke break he said the best punishment for this guy would be locking him in a cellar and letting all the dads of the little girls have a go at him with baseball bats. Sariola, our little sicko, just keeps crying and whining. And his lawyer is denying everything.”

“Have a Coke. The ads say it helps. And get me one too,” I said, shoving a ten-mark coin into Koivu’s hand. Ström was just coming in from the balcony, and his shiny face didn’t brighten when he saw me.

“Have you written up the report on yesterday’s arrest?” he asked without saying hello.

“I haven’t had time.”

“The sentencing hearing is tomorrow at three. We need it there, and you too.”

“Don’t you have enough evidence otherwise? Has he admitted anything?”

“He’d talk more without that lawyer who keeps acting like I’m the criminal instead of that fucking prick!”

“So what do you need me for?”

“Because the lineup is in the morning. The first girls are coming at ten. They’ll probably feel better having a woman around—”

I burst out laughing.

“Come off it, Ström! Compared to me you’re an expert on kids. You have two of your own! And Jenna is the same age as most of the victims. My baby is still in here,” I said, patting my belly, “so don’t ask me for help. Getting along with kids doesn’t have anything to do with your gender. And the social worker will probably be a woman anyway. Was there anything else?”

I wondered why Ström was trying to give me the runaround. After the incident with the skate guards, I’d have thought he’d keep as far away as possible. At least I had hoped he would. Maybe this was just an attempt to boss me around under cover of asking for help. But I had no intention of dancing to Ström’s lead.